


Got away from here, far as I could go.

by tiddlersinajamjar



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, One-Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-26
Updated: 2012-06-26
Packaged: 2017-11-08 14:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/444119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiddlersinajamjar/pseuds/tiddlersinajamjar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha is still the woman who never leaves fingerprints no matter how much blood is on her hands, and  Clint is still the man who wipes the red from her skin, makes things clear again, even if it’s only for a while.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Got away from here, far as I could go.

**Author's Note:**

> I am aware there are some errors, so sorry about that but my brain is not working anymore and I just wanted to put it up. :) Enjoy!

It feels open. She pulls in a breath, taps her forefinger twice where it rests against her thigh. For what seems to be miles the paved courtyard stretches around her, mosques and ornate buildings lining her peripheral vision. People mill around her in a blur of mixed dialects, reflected light playing off their faces in the gathering darkness. The place is comforting and yet off-putting in it’s familiarity. It reminds her of another lifetime, a life lived in the shadows, streets running with blood, recoil ache on her hands and a calming numbness that swallowed her fear.

She remembers her small hands on a gun, holding it like it would turn on her any second, remembers tailing someone through the scattering of tourists outside the Kremlin, heart quickening with every step. Her name hadn’t been Natasha then. 

Now she stands in a similar place, a thin coat wrapped around her, covering the uniform she wears for a different purpose. She stands waiting in the crisp evening air, lights dancing across the puddle at her feet.

She blinks once and a man appears at her shoulder. His eyes are calm when she meets them with her own, and without anything more than a quirk of her lips, she pulls her coat tighter around her and they make their way silently to the other side of the square. He ducks into the shadows between two buildings, and she follows, like they’ve been doing it their entire lives, as if hiding has been what’s kept them safe all these years. 

They stick to the blackness, nondescript clothing discarded, occasionally passing an arrow  that’s plugged itself into one of the cameras that line the walls. The red light stares, but doesn’t see the two figures move by; the man at the woman’s heels.

Natasha knew she could trust Clint from the second he lowered his bow instead of putting an arrow through her forehead. She hadn’t _meant_ to trust him. She was used to betrayal, blackmail and Natasha has never allowed herself to be read the way she has let Clint read her. If there’s one thing about Clint Barton, it is the fact that he has _heart_ , that he sees right to the crux of the matter, is determined to see Natasha for who she is, rather than what she is. She remembers seeing the fire in his eyes, remembers surrendering herself to SHIELD. She remembers staying silent so long that the silence _rang_. When she finally spoke for the first time, voice cracking on syllables, it was to Clint. 

He told her about being in the circus, told her how his crimes were just as heinous as hers, trusted her with stories of his past he’d never told anyone- not because they were supposed to be a secret, but because nobody had ever cared enough to ask. Every day Natasha’s shell opened a little more, and she began to explain who she was and where she came from. What it was like to be indoctrinated, stripped of your true nature, unmade, rebuilt, born from the flames as something you no longer recognise. Clint listened intently, and held her hand even after her nails had dug into his flesh and left marks that stayed for hours afterwards.

That had been 7 years ago.

Natasha looks over her shoulder, smiles thinly at Clint but that’s all he’s ever needed from her. They push through until they come face to face with the stone wall that protects them from the hell that surely awaits them on the other side. Clint breathes quickly through his nose and Natasha doesn’t need to watch to know that he’s preparing to bring this section of the wall down so they can use the car they’ve ducked behind as refuge. He fires the arrow and she flicks the safety off her guns. Hands steady, they both wait as the arrow brings the wall down, and it’s eerily silent for about 20 seconds, and then the men begin to slink through the gap in droves.

The first few that actually make it to the car are hit by Clint’s bow or the barrel of Natasha’s gun. She feels heat graze her cheek and knows it’s her hair that’s giving of that burning smell. Clint’s bow makes a heavy cracking sound against a blond man’s skull and she shoots another at point blank range, his blood coating her fingers. The last men at close range fall, and Clint and Natasha fall back into echoing each other’s movement like they always have.  
Clint holds his bow steady, letting loose arrow, after arrow, the only sound other than the retracting twang of his bow are the echoing blasts of the bullets she fires. She doesn’t know how long they’ve been doing this, minutes, hours, wave after wave the men come crawling over the rubble towards them. Clint reaches for another arrow, breathing out in a sharp huff, pulls the string back and lets it fly, takes out the man whose partner is already falling, a bullet neatly driven into his skull between his eyes. Natasha stops, reloads, and is firing again before Clint frees his next arrow. It’s how it’s always been. They fall into a rhythm that’s easier than breathing, and maybe ‘easier than breathing’ is a cliche that doesn’t apply to them, because breathing has never been easy in a world where the shadows have names, where your only form of protection is the weapon you wield with a well practiced hand and the person who stands beside you.

Blood pools on the ground now and the men slip in it before they reach the car. Natasha knows her face has that hard edge,  and she just wants it to be over, because this is just like the time Clint found her, only she was on the other side.

When the last man falls, Natasha breathes, sags a little and flexes her wrists. Clint pretends he doesn’t notice and playfully flicks at her chin. “You’re gonna need a haircut,” is what he chooses to say, and Natasha can’t help but smile. She ignores the scent of burning hair. 

There’s a breeze that sneaks in through the window that won’t quite close, and it brings goosebumps to the surface of Natasha’s skin. The quiet snipping sound behind her ears is what draws her full attention, and she watches singed red hair float down to where her toes grip the carpet. Clint’s hands are gentle in a way she’s never known, the way his fingers sift through what’s left of her hair is calming. She lets herself close her eyes. No one can see her anyway, and Clint must notice the way her shoulders lose the tension she’s been carrying since they got back to the hotel, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s finished cutting her hair, but his hands don’t let go. Instead, they slide down her neck to rest at her shoulders and Natasha shivers slightly. Clint only notices it because he isn’t called Hawkeye for nothing. She rolls her head forward, her new, short hair falling over her face like a curtain, and he presses gently at the stiffness in her back. When she turns to look at him, she still seems oddly vulnerable but she’s still Natasha, and her eyes still challenge him in that familiar way of hers. She leans in to press her mouth to his and he feels like he should be more surprised. 

She leans back, pulls at his shirt, and he lets her lead him to the bed where they lie rumpled in the sheets for hours. Her mouth is warm at his throat and Clint runs his hands along her spine, smooth skin under calloused fingertips. His hands are in her hair again and they’re kissing the way they do everything else, competitive, always in the echo of the other. She has red in her ledger, he has red wound between his fingers. She bites against his mouth and they move, bodies so close there’s almost no room to breathe. 

Finally the sun begins to cast shadows over the room and Natasha’s watching Clint sleep with his face mashed against her stomach. She runs her fingers along his temple. He sighs and she smiles, thinking that this is what it’s all lead up to, that this is what she had seen 7 years ago, Clint standing before her as her hands stung with blood and the ground trembled at her feet. The fire in his eyes that had crackled then had sparked again last night, and that thought is what makes Natasha freeze, her hands stilling on Clint’s forehead. Because if there’s one thing that sends Natasha bolting, it’s love. Love is for children. She couldn’t have love because nothing is that simple when you live life in a world filled with deadly puppeteers. People are bent, strings are cut, broken, manipulated and twisted leaving the feeling that nothing was worth it in the first place, because so little is left.

Natasha panics, rolls out of bed and Clint’s face lands on the mattress and jolts him awake. “Tash?” he asks, blinking rapidly, and she has to stop herself from crawling back into his arms. Love is for children who don’t have a care in the world. She was not a child, and never had been. She didn’t ever get to be one and never had the choice anyway. Clint’s studying her now, his eyes focused on her like she’s going to run, and maybe she is, she can’t think, can’t process what she’s doing or where she’s going. She looks up and Clint’s face is a little too understanding, it doesn’t mask the thinly veiled anger that lies underneath. She waits and the facade flickers like a shadow, but Clint waits for her to speak, and then looks like he regrets it when she finally finds her mouth again.

—-

Love is for children she said. She said it then and she says it now. It’s become a mantra, one that she has to repeat to convince herself of it because she’s wavering and not sure if she believes it anymore. But Clint’s gone and she _has_ to believe it. Considering the alternative is like a sharp jab to her chest every single time. She paces the SHIELD halls and no one bothers her.

—-

They fight and this time its for real. Knives at each other’s throats, Clint’s face twisted in a snarl that she’s never seen directed at her. Adrenaline pumps through her veins and she tries to keep calm, focused, unwilling to speculate that this time, _she_ might be the one who has to put an arrow through _his_ forehead. “Tasha?” He finally asks, on his knees, and she breathes a sigh of relief, before ramming her foot into his face.

She looks at him now, entirely vulnerable in a way she’s only ever seen in her own frightened 12 year old reflection. “Do you know what it’s like,” he asks, “to be unmade?”   
“You know I do.” It's all she says and she watches his hands unfurl from fists and relax against the restraints. It takes all her strength not to say what she’s thinking. _I almost lost you, I almost had to kill you, I love you, you stupid idiot._ She says nothing and presses her fingers to her temples to erase Clint’s helpless face from her mind.

—-

 _You and I remember Budapest very differently_ , he says, and it stings. It’s a sharp and double edged knife, pinching at her chest. She does remember Budapest, all of Budapest. She remembers the late night they spent wrapped up in each other, remembers her apologies in the morning, that they _shouldn’t_ , because she _couldn’t_. He flinches almost unnoticeably, Clint sometimes can’t help it around Natasha, because their entire relationship is founded by the trust formed on information they can’t keep from each other. Not Natasha’s heritage, nor Clint’s ledger that is reflective of her own, they’re not used to keeping things from each other, and now it’s hard to switch that off. They fight Loki’s army, and Natasha can still feel the silence, even though the city is shattering around her, guttural cries that she can feel under her skin. It doesn’t matter, she tells herself, it’s just another battle wound.  
It does matter though. Clint’s gotten to her like she’d always known he would. It’s why she tried to keep her distance at the beginning and why she’s fought the warm feeling she gets every time Clint smiles at her, as if it’s a secret they both share. It’s not so bad though, because he doesn’t smile at her like that anymore. He still smiles, but it’s tired, worn and sad, as if he tries to but just can’t. 

—-

She opens her mouth and it’s filled with ash. The words she was never able to voice, already dry and crumbling on her tongue.   
She’s fought, and she’s lost. Natasha rarely admits defeat, she’s frightened, but wants this more than anything else she can remember wanting. She wants the fire, wants the pain that being in love is, because without it, she feels nothing and she’s sick of it. But now she can’t speak either, because so much has happened and she wants her words to be right, the one thing that is right amongst so much wrong.

Clint waits.

He can and will wait all night, and Natasha knows this. Her first instinct is to run, but it would be; this is how she was programmed. Instead, she stands opposite Clint and he watches her, tracks every twitch with his eyes.

“Clint,” she tries, but the name is caught in her throat, and she chokes on it. Her second attempt is no better and now Clint’s smiling at her, not by much, but it’s still there, the minuscule quirk of his lips that he can’t hide from her, that he’s stopped trying to hide anyway. It’s the smile she’s missed for so long and suddenly her world shifts again.

This is when Natasha realises that nothing has changed, that she is still the woman who never leaves fingerprints no matter how much blood is on her hands, and that Clint is the man who wipes the red from her skin, makes things clear again, even if it’s only for a while.

Natasha’s good with words, but not so good with feelings, which is why instead of trying to pretend, she leans forward and kisses the corner of Clint’s mouth, where he smiles that secret smile that’s just for her.

“Sorry.” She whispers and ignores the cat call that fades with the roar of one of Tony Stark’s cars. It’s not exactly what she wanted to say, but it’s the only word that really matters.

Clint just grins back, tells her to get in the car, and nothing changes. Which is a little anti-climatic, a little too normal after all they’ve been through, but you know what, Natasha needs some normalcy, and as long as Clint is there, she doesn’t mind at all.


End file.
